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Grow Your Clinic
Want to know how to Grow Your Clinic? In this podcast, the Clinic Mastery team share the stories and strategies of successful clinic owners so that you can confidently grow your clinic too. Check out clinicmastery.com to access the growth resources mentioned in the podcast.
Grow Your Clinic
Sam Bardouh: Transform Your Clinic, Effective Recruitment, and Leadership Evolution | GYC Podcast E280
What if you could transform your clinic from a hands-on practice to a successful business in just over two years? Join us on this episode of the Grow Your Clinic podcast as we chat with Sam Bardouh, who did just that. He went from working 60 clinical hours a week to becoming a full-time business owner, sharing his journey with us to offer invaluable insights on how you can do it too. Sam discusses his fears and challenges and how he managed to get clients and team members on board with these significant changes.
We also dive deep into effective recruitment strategies and the evolution of mentoring within a clinical setting. Sam sheds light on how recruiting practitioners who align with your company's values and providing structured mentorship can lead to better retention and professional growth. Discover how focus sheets and tailored recruitment strategies can enhance your team and ultimately improve patient care. Plus, learn the importance of a continuous recruitment budget and how it helps manage growth effectively.
Our conversation with Sam also covers the evolution of leadership and balancing professional responsibilities with personal life. He shares his experience of stepping back from direct patient care, leading to newfound efficiency and more time with loved ones during periods of rapid business expansion. We explore the significance of transparent leadership and fostering independence among team members, offering actionable insights for clinic owners looking to create a sustainable and scalable practice. Tune in for a comprehensive guide on transitioning from clinician to business owner, filled with practical advice and personal anecdotes.
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This is the Grow your Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery. We help progressive health professionals to lead inspired teams, transform client experiences and build clinics for good. Now it's time to grow your clinic.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Grow your Clinic podcast. My name is Ben Lynch. Now, this episode is ideal for the clinic owners out there whose week is predominantly about seeing and serving patients. Perhaps you work a full-time job seeing clients and then you fit in the business side of things at night or on the weekend and you've got an intention or an ambition to reduce the amount of consulting hours you have, partially or fully, so that you can actually invest in the business, so that you can grow a team of practitioners, so that you can support them through training, mentoring, recruitment, and that you can get the systems right so that there's consistent care delivered to your patients in your community. Because in this episode I speak with Sam Bardot, who just two years ago, was working 60, six zero clinical hours per week and now is at zero quite a milestone. Now, maybe that's not for you, because seeing patients is a key reason of why we get into healthcare, but nonetheless, if you're trying to grow your clinic sustainably, there is some version of a balance where you need more of your week to actually work on the business so that it supports the humans that are part of your team and that ultimately allows you to amplify your impact Throughout the course of this conversation, I wanted to understand from Sam what were some of the fears, the concerns, the concerns, the challenges in that journey and what were the things that he felt he did well that enabled him to make a sustainable transition.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't overnight, it was thoughtful, it was considered and I think, if this is what you want to do, pay attention to how he went about getting his clients on board and his team on board for that transition and what his week looks like now as a full-time business owner. All right, let's get into the episode where we start with Sam's journey over the last two years. What do you wish you knew three, four years ago about growing your clinic? That only became apparent having gone through some of the turbulence, the trials and tribulations of your experience. What do you wish you perhaps caught on to sooner and did something about it.
Speaker 3:I think the most obvious thing is knowing that it's great to work in your business initially when you first start. But if you don't dedicate enough time working on the business, then you'll kind of reach a point where you're just staying the same for a period of time and you reach a point where you can't actually scale more than what you're at because you're not putting in the work on the business. So I wish I knew that a little bit earlier. I think I would have pulled back for treating a little bit earlier than what I did, or even just partially pulled back a little bit more.
Speaker 3:Getting my finances right I think that was a big one and budgeting well. Getting my finances right I think that was a big one and budgeting well. So I wish I had learned how to budget properly before I got started in business, because I think that's a big one. That well, for me anyway, was huge. Once I learned how to do it properly and put a proper structure in place, that helped free my mind a lot. So that was another big one. I think those are the two biggest things that I wish I knew before I started.
Speaker 2:So decreasing your consulting hours per week sooner and perhaps doing it quicker as well that reduction, the pace of reduction, so that you could spend more time working on your business and then also having some budgets or a budget in place, some good handle on the finances. We're going to dive into both of those things. If I recall correctly, you were doing some like 50 hours consulting a week. Is that about right and where are you at today? What did it look like three years ago and where are you today in terms of what your week looks like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, to be honest, I was probably doing more than that initially when I first started. So I was doing six days, sometimes seven days, a week of consulting, and hours were from like 8 o'clock in the morning until about 7 o'clock most days, and so I was always close to that 60 70 hours a week of consulting and admin work and all that other stuff that goes into it. When I first started I was the only guy there. I didn't have a receptionist either, so I was doing everything, and so consulting hours and everything else that goes with running the business was quite high.
Speaker 3:Where I am today, I'm not consulting at all, which is been a big adjustment so I've gone from. So I slowly cut down on consulting hours, so I went from five or six days a week to three days a week to two days a week, and then I finally let go of that two or three months ago, and so now my week looks very different. I've tried to hone in on my structure and what my days look like and I think I've finally found the rhythm. I've set allocated times for meetings and stuff like that and I've blocked things out in my calendar so I know exactly what I'm doing every day or what my week looks like in advance, so it is very different to what I was doing previously.
Speaker 2:And when you make that shift we've seen a lot of clinic owners do it and that's huge to go from 60 hours consulting a week to zero and then be in a full-time business owner role in your clinic. I imagine you had some reservations in doing that, some concerns or challenges. Take us back to that time. What was going through your mind and perhaps what were some of the things you did early on to try and make that a smooth transition? You know from the early days of going from maybe 60 to 50 to 40? Take us back. What were you scared of, what were you challenged by and how did you remedy it?
Speaker 3:The biggest fear of mine was that patients would drop off considerably once I stopped treating them. And so I have been in this area now for about five years and we've developed really good relationships with the community and with the people, and with my patients specifically, and so my biggest fear was that I'm introducing them to relatively new people. I've been treating them for three years very consistently, and so that was my biggest fear that they'd just drop off or they'd go somewhere else or it'd upset them, I guess, and it almost felt like I was parting them off. So that was one reservation. What I did do was that before I dropped off a day or two days, I'd introduce the patients that I thought would be open to transitioning to another practitioner and I'd get that practitioner that were with me and I'd introduce them in a casual sort of manner and put a face to the name before I would send them across to that practitioner, and that helped a lot.
Speaker 2:Like a co-treating setup. Yeah, yeah, in a sense Like a co-treating setup. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in a sense, and sometimes you're right. Sometimes I would get that practitioner to do a specific treatment on the patient while they were in the room with me. The other thing I guess was making sure I hired the right people, because for us and I guess it's the same in clinic mastery if the person doesn't align with your values then I will not hire them, and I believe skill can be taught. So we make sure that we hire the right people that fit our culture and to go down that, thread a little bit further, sam, because you know someone listening in watching us now going.
Speaker 2:I would love to be able to make that transition fully or partially from predominantly consulting to having more of my week as a business owner. Let's say, okay, some of those mechanics are easy enough to pull off if we follow the system. We call it the transfer of trust system, where you are being able to transfer those patients to another therapist. But then someone might say, well, I don't have the therapist I need to recruit and that's one of the challenges. At the moment it's a highly competitive recruitment market. What were some of the things that you did, especially early? When you are small, you don't perhaps have as much time, money, brand awareness in the marketplace as a place to work. What were some of the things that you found really useful in getting those first few team members to join your team and and therefore be able to have people to transition patients to?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess you are right, ben. When I first started obviously there wasn't much money, there wasn't much brand awareness. We didn't have that reputation that we have now. So we were kind of unknown when people were applying for the position, I guess initially. Early on.
Speaker 3:To make it attractive, I offered mentoring to practitioners and I was very strict with my time in delivering that to them and providing that for them. I did hire graduates initially when I first was hiring practitioners, and I guess what I've seen with new grads is that if you can't offer them that one-on-one coaching and mentoring that really attracts them-one coaching and mentoring that really attracts them to the role and every time I do speak to a new grad I realise how fresh they really are when they first graduate. So I think any bit of guidance or mentoring is very valuable to them and very useful. So we offered that, we offered a CPD allowance as well, which was quite attractive to the practitioners, and then, I guess, a good working environment. We're in a relatively nice practice.
Speaker 3:The receptionists that I hired were very bubbly and extroverted and they made me feel welcome as soon as they come in and I made sure that when I first hired them I had enough patients to transfer over to them, but at the same time, I didn't overwhelm them with too many patients and I feel like that would have probably put them off if I hadn't done that and so I eased them into the role. The expectations were there, but they weren't very high, and I made that clear to them so they didn't feel like they were doing something wrong if they lost a patient. And then you just continuously checking up on them and making sure that they had everything that they needed.
Speaker 2:Talk us through that mentoring setup that you had, because when I open up you know seekcom as an example and see a lot of job ads, I like to do a bit of research on the market and what's happening. I would say 100% of job ads for an allied health position mention some version of mentoring and training and how good it is. And having seen so many, I know that they're not all equal. And you do often hear of therapists saying I was promised mentoring and then never got it, which I can totally understand. When you're so full with your own books and seeing patients, it can be very easy to focus on the money generating side of things and forget to do the mentoring side. So how did you set that up? And you said you're very strict with the mentoring and the time allocation. Talk us through what that specifically looked like and perhaps how it's evolved today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, initially it was pretty premature, like it was very different back then to how I do it now. I was very strict with the times in the sense that I would block out the time on a weekly basis to sit down with them to catch up and see if they had any difficult cases they needed help with or if they wanted to shadow me sporadically throughout the week. I was always happy for them to do that. As the years went on, the structure changed a little bit in the sense that I started to incorporate more sort of practical skills for the practitioner to use throughout their consults how to rebook the patient and then giving them a more specific structure to follow when they're treating somebody throughout the consult. So we're changing that sense.
Speaker 3:Frequency is pretty much still the same. We do it on a weekly basis for new grades and then we extend it out once they are more senior to four-monthly and we're in the process now of getting the more senior practitioners to start mentoring and coaching the more junior practitioners. So it's changed a little bit over the years and I think we've found a good group at the moment. We're continuously trying to improve it because it is a big thing for practitioners and they will ask for it. My wife's an architect and she always. She finds it strange that practitioners ask for mentoring, because in her industry it's almost looked down upon if you try and help other architects improve on their skills.
Speaker 2:She doesn't understand it, but I know a lot of practitioners ask for, so we always try to improve on it and make it better. So there's a couple of elements to this around the mentoring side of things. For those that then do implement mentoring, how do you ensure and what do you believe that you do that makes it effective? Because I see a lot of mentoring conversations and they can kind of be just very reactive, like what's top of mind, what was a challenge in the last week or so and that can be helpful, but it sounds like you've got a lot more structure to it. So how do you ensure that, for all the hours spent and the cost really the investment that you put into mentoring, that they are effective, that they lead to tangible progress and outcomes?
Speaker 3:With the new grads, we generally send them like a focus sheet or something to fill out prior to the session.
Speaker 2:Just explain that, just explain that to those that don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we send them like a Google Doc or a Google Sheet to fill out with specific questions before the next morning session. So maybe a few days before the session we'll send it out to them with questions like what's been your biggest challenge over the last week? What do you need help with specifically? Are there any difficult cases? And then we touch on, like some social aspects as well and how they're doing at home.
Speaker 1:If they're making time to exercise and we touch on physical aspects.
Speaker 3:So there are maybe 10 to 15 questions before we meet with them just to get a better understanding of where they're at and where their mind's at as a whole, get a better understanding of where they're at and where their mind's at as a whole, and then when we do catch up, we go through that briefly. We touch on anything that they specifically mention, and what I realized over the years is that if you don't sort of create like an action list or a task list after the mentoring session, it's usually forgotten and not followed up on, and so we try and keep practitioners accountable by sending them a list of things to do after the session and then getting them to follow up with us say a week afterwards, once they've completed all those things or if they've had any issues with any of them that they need help with, and so that's how we do it now. And then we do quarterly reviews as well, which is a little bit more comprehensive in detail, but we go into a few other sort of elements.
Speaker 2:What are some of those elements that are different in a quarterly review, as distinct from your regular mentoring sessions?
Speaker 3:Yeah, again, we do similar sort of things in a quarterly review, as distinct from your regular mentoring sessions. Yeah, again, we do similar sort of things. But on top of that we'll probably touch on, like their numbers and how they performed over the last quarter. I don't really put a big emphasis on that on a weekly or fortnightly basis, unless it's necessary and there's been a big drop in numbers or there's something really odd happening. But in the quarterly reviews we hone in on the numbers a little bit more and see where they can improve and how they can improve and give them strategies and techniques or guide them to come up with strategies or techniques to improve.
Speaker 2:It's a great point, I think, when you're focusing on the behaviors, the way they show up, the way they interact in a consult and around the consults. Really, those numbers are just a reflection of how they're doing them, how well they're doing them to some degree, and so the emphasis is never make these numbers better, but take better care of your patients, and the numbers tell us a story as to how you're doing that over any period of time. I love that. So just to recap for those people listening, because it's quite an evolution. It's a huge evolution You're a very humble guy to go from 50, 60 hours consulting a week and transition to zero and then be in a full-time business owner capacity. Really, in what? Two years, two and a half years is quite an evolution, um, to go under, especially when recruitment can be a challenge. The transition of trust is a challenge, but it sounds like one of the key things was your ability to recruit quality people. I'll'll come back to the hiring piece in a moment. I'd love to unpack some of that. But you said recruit good people. And then a key part to the recruitment is your mentoring structure that you sort of show and tell and that's appealing to a lot of people, as well as the CPD investment and budget and that mentoring structure, a couple of keys to it being effective are a focus sheet, which is a self-reflection that helps them take more ownership and accountability in the session, and then an action list after the session to say, hey, these are the things we have committed to, we've promised to do and we want to make sure they're done. And so we can sort of look at a centralized checklist to ensure they're done and mentoring sessions are effective. Because I certainly see a lot of mentoring sessions, mentoring structures that I say are all varying degrees of good, but there are ones that are just way more effective at creating progress. You know, practitioners are able to see and serve more patients in their day and their week. They're able to get improved satisfaction scores from their clients, are able to, you know, generate more income and create a remuneration benefit for themselves if they've got a reward structure. So it's really great to get some of those specifics and, like you said, it's always evolving. But for those listening in and watching in, they can take a couple of these and say am I doing that, yes or no? If I am, how well am I doing it and how could it improve towards being more effective?
Speaker 2:To come back to the recruitment side of things you mentioned, talking about your mentoring and training was a key reason people chose to work with you and then obviously, they get the experience of the awesome team that you have once they're in there. That keeps them engaged. What did you find as just useful recruitment and what are you finding as useful recruitment strategies at the moment to get applicants in the first place and quality applicants in the first place? Is it literally you're just using a job platform like Seek and you're getting an abundance, or what are you finding particularly useful for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there are a few things, ben, I do use SEEK, which is the most common one I guess a lot of people use, but I've found with different professions, different platforms work better. So, specifically for chiropractor, seek was great, but with dieticians, for example, we got a lot of applicants through SEEK, but quality applicants come through LinkedIn more so than SEEK, and so I use a variety of different platforms to recruit.
Speaker 2:With the LinkedIn. What sort of activities were you doing there on LinkedIn to generate applicants?
Speaker 3:To be honest, literally just finding dietitians that were local or not too far away that had the specific qualifications that we're after, whether it's like pediatric dietitians or sports dietitians, and just messaging them and getting in touch with them on a sort of personal level, keeping it casual and asking them if they were interested in a chat, and I got a lot of really sort of applicants doing it that way.
Speaker 2:I want to come to your role as it is today. Now you're, you know, quote we use the term off the tools, uh, not working, which is a term that is a little odd and more fitting of a tradie coming off the tools, and it relates perhaps to the podiatry origins of Clink Mastery, where there were a lot of tools. But let's start with hiring and recruitment, and maybe by extension team, maybe by extension team in your current week, now, operating fully and solely as a business owner, what are you doing in regards to recruitment, preparing for the future cohort of team members? What are your weekly, fortnightly or monthly activities look like in recruitment, in preparing for that next stage, or do you just recruit when you need to? What's your approach?
Speaker 3:Before we used to just recruit when we needed to, but now as we've grown, I've realized that it doesn't work the best doing it that way. So what I've done is allocated a specific budget every month that goes towards recruitment. So whether that means putting aside the amount that we need for a C-CAD every month and having an ad running continuously, we're always kind of recruiting at the moment because we are growing, so I'd rather not be reactive and just recruit in advance. I can't add up in advance. I don't put much else sort of thought into it apart from that. At the moment we're in sort of a growth phase, so we are taking on more people but, to be honest, never had real difficulty in recruiting.
Speaker 2:Whether or not there's a bit of luck involved there I'm not sure, but we haven't had much difficulty in the past and you know it is true that there are certain factors for certain clinics that mean they don't have some of the hardships or challenges of others.
Speaker 2:Definitely there's a luck component to it, but I think being able to put in those regular activities, continue to invest they are good things that you can control ultimately to attract one applicants and two quality applicants over a long period of time. You spoke earlier to budget and then just there around a recruitment budget. That's something I don't often see. A lot of clinics have, before they come into the CM community, a very purposeful budget that they would put towards recruitment and, in fact, a budget overall. I'm still surprised to this day of clinics doing 10 million plus a year in revenue that operate without a budget and anything in between. Talk to me about your evolution in getting a budget, because you said that was one of the key things that enabled you to make this transition. Talk us through your experience of going from not having budgets to using budgets very purposefully in your business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was a bit like that as well. I didn't have a budget at all a couple of years ago and we generated quite a bit of income and so it was all in my eyes. And then when I did put a budget together, I realised how much was going unnecessarily without us realising. And so it's evolved quite a lot since the early days and now we've got like a specific budget put in place where we've got everything listed out and how much we spend on a monthly basis for those things, and it just helps us future plan a little bit better and we know when we're going to have a low month because, for example, it's winter and people get sick, and we know how much revenue we usually generate in that month and we can prepare for it and forecast better. So the budget has helped a lot and that way, if we know we're going to have a specific amount of profit that month, we can allocate a little bit more for advertising, for example, or recruiting. So it's helped quite a lot. I wish I had done it years ago.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people have the same realisation like I wish I did this years ago, and that is the same realization like I wish I did this years ago, and that is the same for me as well, where you realize okay, number one, I can identify waste. And if there's a common challenge that I hear clinic owners, especially when they start within the clink mastery journey, is there's typically some version of I. I don't feel like I'm earning enough money myself as a business owner to really warrant all these headaches and risks and whatnot. And, like you said, well, getting a handle on your finances might just reveal a bunch of wastage that's happening that could otherwise perhaps top you up personally or at least fund the business in its next stage of growth. The second thing is often hear a lot of people get to the point where they didn't realize that that month was going to be a three pay period and so they don't have enough money set aside to make payroll or they're stretching it. And just a little bit of forethought, a little bit of planning in the budgeting side of things means you shouldn't ever have months like that, fortnights like that, moving forward.
Speaker 2:And I always thought that, you know, budgeting was pretty dry. It was sort of reserved for accountants and bookkeepers until I had this like really good conversation with a mentor many years ago that really budgets are us putting our money where our mouth is in, that we say we want to do all these activities to grow our clinic, but how is that reflected in the budget and have we actually allocated the money that we have or intend to have purposefully for a certain outcome? So if clinic owners are coming into the community being like I'm just not earning enough for the position I'm in, you would just got to come back to it. At the end of the day, you're running a business and that comes back to commercial viability. One of the best ways for you to do that is to have a budget. It's such a controllable, practical thing that can get you clarity within a couple of hours worth of work. So I'm really glad you spoke to that.
Speaker 2:What does your budgeting process look like today? Do you do this monthly, quarterly? Who do you do it with? How do you do it? Is it by yourself, with others? Talk us through your process for budgeting.
Speaker 3:Look, at the moment I'm doing it pretty much every three to four weeks, and I'm doing that because I'm still really trying to fine-tune it as much as possible, right, and so I'm doing it quite often at the moment. I usually do it by myself. It takes me a few hours to sit down once a month or so and, uh, at first I hated it and now I don't mind it too much and I understand the numbers a lot better now. So I can yeah, I can, I can really fine tune it and predict almost what the next couple of months look like.
Speaker 2:It's really powerful when that happens. I realize there's a degree of crystal balling here. You know what's it going to look like in six months from now? Well, none of us know, but with the best knowledge and insights that we have today, we're trying to get a plan together of what we're going to do and space it out. I just see so many clinics without purposeful budgeting or even account management. They're just paying bills as they come in, they're not managing their cash flow, they get into these binds and pinches, they lean into an overdraft or a credit card and just perpetuates this cycle of like financial stress and angst, and it doesn't have to be that way. I think there are a number of things you can do to um, remedy it, um, or lessen the severity of it.
Speaker 3:For sure, if you know I feel like you can get away with it, maybe when you're by yourself or like another person, but once you grow the team, it becomes really important to get that right.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing you're right on. I see these clinics that you know for all intents and purposes like they're big clinics and they've just kind of gotten away with it, and that's not necessarily a bad thing or a judgment, but just saying that if it's not an issue, if it doesn't bite you in the bum, you tend not to go do anything about it because you're so busy doing other things supporting, mentoring practitioners, worrying about advertising and marketing, getting clients in building systems. So I realise there's a whole lot of things to consider, but if, at the end of the day, the viability, the sustainability of your business is one of them, is the most important thing, Because without it you don't have an impact then surely budgeting is a key action and activity that you need to do. Speaking of that as our key actions and activities as a business owner, what does your week look like now? You're not treating patients, but you're growing this team and this company. What does your week look like, or typical sort of month, look like now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my week, like I said, looks very different. I've tried to put all my big sort of meetings across two days a week, if I can, and then the rest of the days I'm either I'm still mentoring a few of the practitioners, so I still do that, and then all the back-end sort of stuff, I guess all the making sure the marketing and the advertising is running well, making sure all the systems and policies and procedures are up to date, and just trying to to again forecast for the future and what the future looks like. We've we've We've got a really exciting project coming up, so we're working towards that. We're building about a 2,000-square-metre wellness facility about 15 or 20 minutes away from where we're located, and so a lot of my energy is being dedicated towards that at the moment, because that's quite a big project, and so some of my days include just meeting with the developer and making sure it's on track and trying to look for suitable businesses to come into the facility as well. We're rebranding at the moment, so I'm doing that too, so there's always something to do like as a.
Speaker 3:I thought it was going to be hard to see my look up, but it's. I don't know how I was treating before and doing all this stuff in the background, but it's how I was treating before and doing all this stuff in the background. So it's only I guess when you step away you realize how hard it was before. But I guess I can essentially use my time a lot more efficiently now and effectively it's a great point.
Speaker 2:It's it's a common soundbite that I hear from a lot of clinic owners, either in the lead up to transitioning away from seeing patients, which is not everyone's course or path.
Speaker 2:I think we're always about you, do you?
Speaker 2:Whatever lights you up and is part of what you would call your desire statement, um, but for those that do, come off the tool, stop training patients to be more into that business owner.
Speaker 2:They often think what am I going to do? Like, uh, how am I going to fill my time? You're like there's plenty of great things that you can do to um, improve what is and expand on it as well. I think you get the opportunity to really bring to life all those amazing ideas that you have for re-imagining the healthcare journey of your patients, to really bring a first class, a world-class experience to them, from the facilities through to the therapy interventions, the technology that's used and everything in between. I feel like there's a new level unlocked of your creative expression as a business owner, being able to be put on a canvas when you have that freedom in your week, where it's not so bound by appointments, meetings with clients, meetings with team members to be able to do this. How have you balanced such sort of rapid, meaningful, substantial growth with a young family? You've got two kids, is that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was another big reason why I pulled back a little bit, because it was getting to a point where I was spending time with the family, but it wasn't as much as I wanted to.
Speaker 3:um, and so the initial phases of growth, say two or three years ago, were pretty tough because I was putting in a lot of hours and, um, I didn't have that-life balance. Now that I've pulled back, I make a conscious effort to finish at a certain time every day and spend some meaningful time with the family. But the initial phases of growth were quite challenging and were difficult.
Speaker 3:We navigated through it quite well, but it just meant I had to sacrifice a little bit more permission to get to where we are today, which I've learned a lot from. I've taken a lot from that. We've come out of the other end pretty good.
Speaker 2:For those who are looking to make a similar transition in their journey from predominantly consulting to becoming more of a business owner in their week. What advice or lessons do you have for them from your own experience, having gone through it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was scared initially to pull back, but patients adapt and they mold and they change according to what you offer them. If you do it properly and you do it genuinely and you're still caring for them and you're giving them the best sort of care they can receive by transitioning them to the right practitioner, then don't stress too much about it, because things end up working out, and I noticed that initially when I dropped my Saturday. Saturdays were always very busy and in demand and people that used to see me on a Saturday said they couldn't make it any other day during the week except for Saturday and that's why they used to book in on the weekend. As soon as I dropped my Saturday, they changed their, their training, thinking and they started to see me in the evenings instead of the Saturday. So people adapt and change. So that's one piece of the dialogue.
Speaker 3:Applies, I guess, is to not be too scared to let go as long as you've planned for it properly. Yes and so, yeah, that was my biggest issue. I was just holding on for as long as I could, but then, when I let go, I realised that things just worked themselves out and it was okay.
Speaker 2:I think in that scenario it's a great way to go about it. It's a simple and yet profound summary. Hard to perhaps do, like you said, to lean into some of the discomfort of how's it going to be received, what are patients going to think, what are the team going to think? You also realize that you can adjust, like you'd always add on a couple of hours here and there and go okay, we went a bit too quick, too soon, or I can always add it back. I think people often don't think of the other side of it, like it's not a permanent decision necessarily, like you can always adjust and be malleable. And so your team has grown quite significantly. I imagine as well your leadership capabilities have also had to evolve quite a bit. What does the team look like today? How many therapists have you got? What disciplines and admin? Just give us a sense for the size of your team.
Speaker 3:So we've got two admin, we've got five chiropractors, we've got three remedial massage therapists, two dietitians, an exercise phys. We've got three reformed Pilates instructors as well, and that's it for now. I'd love to have a physio and a podiatrist, but because of the contract and the complex that we're in, there's exclusivity for certain professions, so we can't have them join us.
Speaker 2:But maybe in the next phase, I think we'll sounds like you've got an awesome wellness hub, uh, about to be launched soon enough. And how have you evolved as a leader? What have been some of the key evolutions that you've had to make as the business owner and and as a leader?
Speaker 3:yeah, personally, I'm investing a lot more time and resources in learning on how to become a better leader. I think you notice, when you first start trying to make that transition, that there's a big difference between managing a team and then leading a team, and so I've learned that over the last few years and I've put a lot of effort into improving on myself as much as I can, whether it's through online resources or courses that I've attended in the past, or just reading up on or reading specific books that I think are useful from a leadership perspective.
Speaker 2:What have been some of those key distinctions between the managing of the team and leading a team in your mind? How have you sort of distilled that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the biggest ones would be giving people direction, but not necessarily the answer, and helping just guide their thought process so they can figure things out eventually on their own, and I feel like people learn a lot better that way and they don't actually mic you micro-managed either, and so just giving people that independence and opportunity to try and grow on their own with a little bit of guidance, has been one sort of big takeaway that I've started to implement. And just being open and honest with people and very transparent and black and white has been another one. I've been burnt in the past where there was a grey area that we didn't really discuss properly, and I've learned from that, and I think in some situations you've just got to be black and white with certain things that you want done or expected.
Speaker 2:There's some great principles and practices to follow, giving that direction and also being open and transparent. Part of perhaps your evolution has been a connection to the Clinkmaster community. What sort of role has that played in your journey? For those that are listening in, who maybe are doing it by themselves or considering getting support, what has your experience been like? Clinic Mastery?
Speaker 3:has been great, and a lot of the things that I've touched on and spoken about now have been because of Clinic Mastery, opening my eyes up to things that I haven't enforced or had in place previously.
Speaker 3:So things like structuring your budget a little bit better and different techniques and strategies in terms of mentoring practitioners. So, yeah, looking back now, I think I would have done it sooner if I had the opportunity to, or if I had known about you guys, I would have done it sooner. But I think having having a mentor or a coach as a business owner is really important, because we go to uni, we might be great practitioners, but we're not business people at the end of the day, and getting that guidance from people that have done it before and been there and proven that they can do it effectively is really, really important. There are a lot of coaches out there these days and I feel like every second person is calling themselves a coach or a business coach, but going with a group of people that have proven track record is really it's been for me anyway it's been very beneficial.
Speaker 2:It's a great point and I appreciate that. I think that the collective team and, by extension, the community, are all about finding what are the best practices really to run your clinic, you know, in a sustainable fashion, in a fashion that creates a really great place to work and also a great place for patients to come for their healing and wellness journey. So it's awesome to learn from other clinics and see what they're doing, celebrate their progress, learn from their mistakes as well, as they share so openly. I think that's a key part that I love, as well as having external mentors to see your blind spots, to call you out on some of the delusions or false thinking that you might have about how to grow. It's so useful to have someone advising you and supporting you, cheering you on as well, because it's hard enough being in business, let alone if you try and operate on your own. Sam, that's been incredible the sort of flow on from you know, setting that intention of coming off the tools from trading 50, 60 hours a week to being a business owner, making sure that that is a slow and steady progress. Like you said, you actually did it over what? About two years thereabouts? And you focused on recruiting the right people. Focusing on recruiting new grads taking a bet not a lot of people do that with new grads but backing your ability to mentor and train them and show them the framework of, of how to take great care of patients that's what it's all about at the end of the day and then being able to back it up with some accountability mechanisms for effective mentoring and training, so that you know that well, I've added these team members, but it's not like it keeps coming back all on you. And I think that's a subtle and very important distinction when I see clinic owners say you know, I've recruited all these team members but they're, you know, 40, 50% utilized and they just can't quite grow them. Perhaps they've made the wrong hire. And it speaks to the culture, the team. The progress really can start at recruitment, like having a really rigorous process. I realize not everyone has the perhaps privilege or abundance of applicants or quality applicants at the moment, but it's one for you to consider.
Speaker 2:I think for those listening and watching in, is that you really make sure you put people through their paces and you pick good people as best as you possibly can. That's where it begins and flows through Through to budgeting. I love that you spoke about budgeting. Look, numbers aren't, naturally the first thing I go to either. There are many a joke been shared on this podcast about that, but I've learned, like you, to love them and understand the relevance and importance of why they matter incredibly. So budgeting such an important thing, and then the integration of family and your evolution as a leader is really cool. So many great notes out of this podcast. I'm sure those listening or watching in have got something to take away into their day and use as we wrap up the episode. Sam, do you have any parting words of wisdom, some key considerations for people who have heard your story and say, gee, I would absolutely love to follow in some of those footsteps of yours. What would you say to them?
Speaker 3:I think the biggest thing for me has been or the biggest reason for some of my success has been what our core values speak of, and the biggest one is being honest and genuine and treating patients the same way you treat your mother or your father or a family member, and so that's probably been the biggest reason for our success and I try and instill that in all of our practitioners. And I guess if you can do that and you do things genuinely, like I mentioned before, and you do it for the right reasons, then you'll be successful eventually. And just keep at it and stay consistent and if you don't know, ask and get the guidance of someone that does need it, but just do things genuinely and do things honestly and do well with the guidance.
Speaker 2:I love that integrity to the core values of your clinic, of your company. Sam, thank you so much for sharing so openly with us today. You can find all the show notes for this episode on our website, clinicmasterycom. And come and check us out on YouTube Hit, subscribe, like the video, leave a comment here for Sam about what was a key insight for you in this episode and we'll for you in this episode and we'll see you on another episode very soon. Thanks very much, sam.
Speaker 1:Always been. Thanks for having me. Thanks for tuning in to the Grow your Clinic podcast To find out more about past episodes or how we can help you head to wwwclinicmasterycom forward slash podcast and please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice. See you on the next episode.